Mythopoesis
by jisaly
Summary: Unlike most of the world, Minerva McGonagall remembers the boy from which the legend derived and wonders about the role she played in forging Tom Riddle's infamy.
1. Chapter 1

_**Title: Mythopoesis  
Author's Note: Apologies to JK Rowling for taking liberties with her characters. Minerva's background especially is fabricated to coincide with the historical context.**_

_**Part I:**_

_September 1938_

To twelve year old Minerva McGonagall, London weather felt unpleasantly moist, but she liked the city well enough. Her mother would've complained that the air felt ripe for mold and then would've probably ranted about how she thought London was a rotten city.

But her mother wasn't there, was across the world in a city of parching heat whose warmth she preferred over that of her husband and child. Of course, Lady McGonagall had not articulated those rather shameful feelings to Minerva, but had sent the girl off with a kiss after murmuring,  
"You may write to me, darling, but nothing over a page. I shall be attending some very important engagements with very important people. And you mustn't allow that Crouch boy to overtake you in that class...even if it is Divination."

Minerva's own secret shame was that she felt perfectly content with just her father accompanying her to London. A former professor who viewed every experience as a learning experience, he had taught her a fair amount of magic ahead of time. On her ninth birthday, he had turned some candles into a set of short-lived fairies which had hovered above her cake like a gem-set halo. For days afterward, she had practiced before showing her father a fairy of her own.

It was not until Hogwarts that Minerva discovered how much more existed besides Transfiguration, and now she was returning for her second year with anticipation as well as a deep resolve to maintain her place at the head of her year. Too soon, the father and daughter arrived at the train station where they found their way to an ordinary wall between platforms nine and ten.

"You first, liebling," her father said. Minerva nodded and slipped through the barrier.

A throng of parents filled platform nine and three quarters, yelling last minute farewells and reminders. As Minerva turned around, her own father placed a chapped kiss on her cheek and handed her a small glass container.

"Your mother's gift," he explained. "It's not that roomy so I think Nagini would appreciate some time outside the box." Her father's eyes, Minerva noticed, were wet, but he boosted her onto the train before she could say anything else.

Five minutes later, she was comfortably seated in a compartment with her friends when the door slid open and in stepped a dark-haired boy wearing rather shabby robes. A fellow Gryffindor, Charlus Potter, glanced at the boy and said loudly,

"This compartment is for second years only."

The boy looked unfazed. If anything, he looked dismissively at the older student and replied, "Your side is half empty, and there's nowhere else to sit on this train."

Charlus stared at the boy. "Merlin, does no one respect seninority any --- "

"Charlus." Minerva couldn't resist. "It's seniority…and you're being a twit."

"Oh look at him Minerva --- "

"Ignore him and just sit down."

The boy did so and remained silent for the next hour during which most of the older students pointedly ignored him. Immediately, they had identified him as different from their crowd. They were a purely pureblood lot and knew one another because their parents had attended Hogwarts together, had played Quidditch against one another, and had exclusively socialized their offspring with other purebloods to continue the cycle. They did not recognize this boy who wore second-hand robes and who was currently reading a tattered version of _A History of Magic._

"You, first-year, what's your name?" Charlus asked finally.

"Tom."

"Just Tom?"

"Riddle, Tom Riddle."

"Huh," Charlus grunted. "Who are your parents?"

Minerva looked up from her book. "Might I make the outlandish suggestion that Tom's parents might also be Riddles?"

"More prickly than usual, eh, Minerva?"

"Stop it Char," Dorea Black said and smiled at the boy. "You don't look like a first-year Tom. You're so tall. Doesn't he look older Minerva?"

"Positively ancient," Minerva answered, immersed in her book again. She flipped a page and then frowned. Where was ---?

"Char, do not panic," she said gravely. "But I do believe that Nagini is under your feet."

"What are you ---"

"Snake!"

"Son of a blast-ended skrewt! Minerva, pick it up before I curse your bloody pet!"

Extending her arm to the reptile, Minerva gently brought it to her lap where it arranged itself into several green coils in the folds of her robes. Across from her, Tom was gazing at the snake intently, and something in his eyes did indeed make him look older than his years.

"Do you like snakes?" she asked him.

For the first time, she saw a flicker of interest in those eyes as he coolly replied, "They like me."

"Then I think you'll enjoy this trick."

She removed a small flute from her pocket and began to play. To nearly every human ear in the compartment, it was an unnatural and repulsive sound, but Tom leaned toward her as did the snake. It raised its flat head, and its body surged like a wave as if to strike before receding to begin the pattern anew. Having just recently learned how to handle the instrument, Minerva managed only a few brief chords before her throat became dry, and she put it down.

Charlus let out a low whistle. "Sometimes, Minerva, I wonder if the Sorting Hat didn't read your head correctly."

She glared at him. "I come from four generations of Gryffindors. Mother would've wrung my neck if I had turned out as anything else."

"You're luckier than me," Dorea cut in. "I'm probably the first Black since the Dark Ages to go into a house other than Slytherin."

The conversation morphed quickly after that. Complaints about parents turned into talk of broomsticks, but Minerva noted that the Riddle boy kept looking in her direction, alternating his attention between her and the snake. Later, after everyone else drooped asleep, he finally spoke.

"I thought that Gryffindors hated snakes."

"Generally speaking, they do. I don't because I was raised in India, and snakes don't represent Slytherin there. They symbolize death and mortality, but also regeneration, rebirth, prosperity, and of course, the deities called nagas. That's where Nagini's name comes from."

"Nagini," Tom repeated, savoring the word. "Beautiful name. May I hold her?"

The snake responded noticeably to Tom's touch, twisting around his long fingers, flicking a tongue against his skin, provoking a surprisingly charming smile on his face. Turning back to Minerva, Tom opened his mouth, but then the train lurched heavily to a stop, and the rest of the students awoke. As they made their way out of the train and toward the lake where lantern-lit boats waited, Tom said softly,

"I want to show you something, but it has to be just you. Tomorrow night after dinner."

Minerva looked at the boy uneasily. There was something off about him. Like Dorea had said, he seemed so much older as if he lacked the essence of being a boy. Initially, he had seemed disinterested in everything and everyone, but her little trick with the snake fascinated him, made him eager and made her unwilling to refuse.

"All right, Riddle. Any other instructions?"

"Bring Nagini too."


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: Mythopoesis **

**Part II ~  
**

To be at Hogwarts was to live in a sort of microcosm, but sometimes, when the moods of muggles and wizards matched, even the school was affected by the increasingly fervent talk of politics, patriotism, and paranoia. When Professor Slughorn did not show up immediately for Potions class, his second-year students fell into discussion about _that German crazy man_, trading more rumors than they did facts, and while some of them recognized the gruesome truth, others imagined the recent events as something momentous and grand.

"It is revolutionary," Abraxas Malfoy said, distinctly enunciating the newly learned word, "what Grindelwald is doing for wizards everywhere."

"Oh really?" Charlus Potter flung back. "Is that what you Slytherins call heroism? Killing Muggles in the middle of the night?"

"Of course _you_ would disagree, Potter. You, whose filthy House takes in the cockroaches –"

"Mr. Malfoy!" Slughorn had returned and was staring, horrified, at his student. Despite the affection he lavished on those from pureblood pedigrees, Slughorn had made it clear that he valued his talented Muggle-born students as much as the ones from traditional heritage. Clearing his throat, the usually mild-mannered professor said with as much conviction as he could muster, "Ten points from Slytherin, and no more of this nonsense. You children couldn't possibly understand what you're talking about. Well, except for those with parents in the Ministry...Ms. McGonagall , your parents are both in service to our government, anything legitimate you've heard from them?"

At the front of the room, Barty Crouch frowned and objected, "Professor, her father works for the Germans."

"He works in the embassy!" Minerva retorted.

"Yes, he certainly likes the country well enough. My father works in the Ministry too, Department of Law Enforcement, and he's told me that your father is on a list of those who have associated with Grindelwald."

"Are you on a witch-hunt, Barty," Minerva asked icily. "Or is it a wild goose chase?"

Once again, Slughorn stepped in with half-hearted authority. "All right, that's enough. No need to turn on each other. Besides, we have some very difficult brewing to do today…"

But Minerva could barely concentrate on chopping daisy roots after that exchange. It was an outrageous accusation, she thought with each clumsy hack of her knife. Her father was not a traitor, and anyone falsely calling him one insulted her in a way she would not bear. The rest of the day progressed miserably, and Charlus compared her to a thundercloud more than once. It was not until dessert that Minerva remembered about the meeting with the Riddle boy. She scanned the Great Hall for him, but with the boy nowhere in sight, she decided to go to the library to finish her homework. Her plans all changed though when she saw Tom, perched on a stone-carven bench outside the library as if he had been waiting for her all along. Sinuously draped around his shoulders was Nagini.

"Hullo." Tom smiled at her as if he hadn't taken something without asking.

"I didn't figure you for a thief," Minerva said, not returning the smile.

"I wouldn't call it stealing exactly. She came to me."

"Right, well, she's coming back with me. She is _mine_ after all."

As if he hadn't heard her at all, Tom absently caressed the snake. "I can imagine how perplexed the purebloods in this school must have been when they saw this boy of no family, of no reputation enter the most _pure _house of Slytherin."

Minerva quirked an eyebrow, considered his words, and thought of home where she had seen turbaned healers speak to snakes. _She came to me. _Snake charming, her mother had told her, was an inherited ability. Was that what he was trying to tell her?

"You're a pureblood then, or you might be a half blood, but the Hat must've sensed a direct link to Salazar Slytherin in you. That's why you could call Nagini to you. You're a Parselmouth."

He looked pleased with her answer. "So I'm not the only reader of _A History of Magic_ in this school. Other children are so ignorant of history these days." He paused and mused aloud, "My father must've been the source of the magic though I can't imagine why he would choose my mother then."

"Why your father?"

"My mother died, succumbed to death at the age of nineteen. A witch would not be so…_mortal."_

"Everyone dies," Minerva said though she knew that witches and wizards typically lived longer than Muggles.

Tom scowled, and she found it fascinating that a hint of anger could twist that angelic face into such a cruel expression. There was a silence as Minerva climbed onto the bench beside him.

"Well Riddle? Aren't you going to show me why we're here?"

He opened his mouth and spilled out the alien words while she watched, as enthralled as the snake he controlled.

"I don't think I can really call her mine anymore," Minerva murmured after he finished. "You can keep her if you'd like. I trust that you'll take good care of her."

His smile was positively wicked. "I assure you, she'll be my most precious possession."

-------------------

_November 1938_

As a rule, Minerva distrusted rumors, but the one she heard about Tom and Abraxas Malfoy was more than a little unnerving.

"Apparently," Dorea recounted to her, " Malfoy was telling people that Tom's father had abandoned him. Then one day, Tom was his usual polite self and asked Malfoy if he could talk with him privately. My brother Pollux was there. He said he saw them walk down the slope and past the pumpkin patch to the Forbidden Forest. When they came back, Malfoy had these bruises around his neck. He told the nurse that they had encountered a forest troll and that Tom had stunned the creature so that they could get away."

Minerva looked dubiously at her friend. "He didn't explain why they had gone into the forest?"

"He won't say." Dorea glanced at the Slytherin table before whispering to Minerva, "Okay, don't tell anyone that _I_ told you this, but my brother said that when he went to visit Malfoy in the hospital wing, the boy was delirious. When he was hallucinating, he started crying about how he couldn't breathe because the _serpent _was going to kill him.'"

Later that week, when Tom came to find her in the library, Minerva regarded him warily and asked as casually as she could, "How is Nagini?"

"I'm afraid I've spoiled her," Tom replied pleasantly. "Her meals of mice and sliced rabbit have made her a bit thick in some parts."

"Oh so you've turned my slender girl into a python?"

He shrugged. "I'm working my way up the food chain. By the way, what are you reading? I haven't seen this book before."

"And you've seen all the other books in this library?"

"I plan to," he answered. "It's one of my more innocent ambitions."

"I suppose ruling the world comes second in priority?"

"Naturally. One can live without the stress of leadership, but one cannot survive without books."

They are the last ones in the library that night as well as many other nights, two dark heads engaged in compiling rival databases. She was older than him, and her years abroad had given her the lead, but what would happen, she wondered, when he caught up with her?


End file.
